Skate

The bed is a beautiful lie.
It believes you. You who were never
more relentlessly you. As I love
coming home late when it's still.
Even later, a man on a skateboard
sails down the middle of the street,
the only sound. Life
is this way. By some grace
you are not one of them. That
alone. You are a staying-
in-place. Stubborn as ugliness.
At night the sea is a lie—
it's only the sound of blackness
falling and falling and overripe.
As I hear the skateboard wheels
sh-thunk sh-thunk along the street.
A tide of sorts, but human. If I spend
my life praying to nothing what is lost?

Copyright © 2005 Beckian Fritz Goldberg All rights reserved
from Lie Awake Lake
Oberlin College Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission